The ramblings of someone trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions

Thursday, April 17, 2008

The Night Shift

This one's been interesting so far. While not terribly busy, we've dealt with a couple of strange situations that are worth writing about.

About 2030 we got called to the Manchester Police Department for a Psychiatric problem. We went to the lobby, which is unusual as we are usually directed to the sally port to deal with prisoners. In the lobby was this 28 year-old female, very pregnant, with a 12-month old daughter in tow. She had told one of the officers that her husband had spiked her coffee with an unknown substance as well as spiking her daughter's bottle of milk. She felt rather anxious and paranoid, and she mentioned that the daughter napped hard at a time that wasn't normal for her. I went through the normal questions about the history of the present problem as well as past medical history, medications, allergies, etc., for both her and her daughter. She told me that she has a history of bi-polar disorder and she isn't taking her medications because of the pregnancy. The toddler daughter is fine, and her pregnancy has been unremarkable and she's getting the appropriate pre-natal care that she needs. So we transported the both of them. Got her to the hospital, and I gave report to Robin, the nurse who was in charge for the shift. I gave her the rundown, told her that indeed she'd been across the river for what I suspect was a similar incident a couple of days prior, and that I thought there was more to this than what the patient told me.

Turns out that I was right - the adult patient had a complaint filed against her at the initial visit to DCYF (the department of children, youth, and families), and they were also going to be filing a complaint against her as well. Also, there was a possibility that the adult patient was going to be IEA'd somewhere (an IEA is an involutary emergency admission to one of the psychiatric facilities in the state, possibly the NH State Hospital in Concord for something like this). She is also quite certifiable, from what Robin told me. Apparently she has a lengthy psychiatric history, including schizo-affective disorder with paranoid features.

Why do I always seem to get the craziest of the crazies?

We also got called for an intoxicated person in the back of one of Manch Vegas' fine drinking establishments not long after that. A 29 year-old male, quite impaired, lying on the ground near the back entrance. Police were already on scene. When we got there, this guy was being really rowdy - very stressed and angry. He was also being really uncooperative, and the cops were within a hair's breadth of taking him into custody for disorderly conduct. I was able to talk him into coming with us, but once we got him on board the ambulance he started to become disruptive again. My partner was able to deal with him - I was pretty impressed with that, considering how much he and I both dislike dealing with drunks. Once we got him to the hospital, we got him into one of the treatment rooms, and he was still being nasty. I'd about had enough at that point, so I gave him the choice of settling down or I would have the police come back and take him into custody. He started bitching at me about choices, but I think he settled. Before we left the hospital I did give one of the ED technicians a hand cleaning him up. He managed to piss all over himself, and I'm not sure he didn't do it accidentally. In any case, he was really out of it. I wonder what his blood alcohol content is?

About The Author

I'm a Paramedic. I take care of injured and ill patients. Sometimes I deal with their problems. And I make sure I treat my patients as I would want to be treated.

At one time in my life I was a professional musician. I loved it. And I was much younger back then.

I am educated as a computer engineer, and I worked in the industry for just over 12 years. Some people wonder how someone like me would make a change like that - from music to computers to medicine. I wish I could tell you.